The purpose of
this site is for information and a record of Gerry McCann's Blog
Archives. As most people will appreciate GM deleted all past blogs
from the official website. Hopefully this Archive will be helpful to
anyone who is interested in Justice for Madeleine Beth McCann. Many
Thanks, Pamalam

Note: This site does not belong to the McCanns. It belongs to Pamalam. If
you wish to contact the McCanns directly, please use
the contact/email details
campaign@findmadeleine.com

UK law on contempt applies to any publication that creates 'a substantial risk' of prejudicing the course
of justice

Gill PhillipsMonday 10 January 2011

UK law on contempt is set out in the 1981 Contempt of Court Act, which applies to all publications that create "a substantial risk" the course of justice will be "seriously
prejudiced". The 1981 Act was passed, in part, in response to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in a
case involving The Sunday Times, and was perceived as representing a shift in the balance of public interest in favour of
freedom of speech.The law does not set out what is allowed or not but lays down broad principles: it is a question of judgment
in each case as to what may create "substantial risk". The most obvious examples are revealing a defendant's
previous convictions or otherwise implying guilt.

In the US, the power of the courts to punish for contempt by
publication is extremely limited. Compare, for example, the UK position to the US media coverage of the proceedings against
OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson and Phil Spector. Or that of Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant, charged with the
rape of a young woman in a hotel in Colorado. One cable television station invited viewers to vote on Bryant's innocence
or guilt – a US judge subsequently dismissed the case against Bryant, after the accused failed to testify. There is
a TV channel and website dedicated to ongoing prosecutions, where you can watch the trial, access the evidence and vote on
matters relating to the trial as a "13th" juror.

In practice, a number of matters are relevant when considering
if a publication is likely to create a "substantial risk of serious prejudice": if the trial involves lay assessors,
such as a jury (judges should be able to rise above what they read in the papers); the likelihood of the publication coming
to a potential juror's attention; its likely impact on an ordinary reader at the time of publication; and the so-called
fade factor (how far away the trial is likely to be) – the longer the gap between publication and the trial, the less
the substantial risk of serious prejudice is likely to be. In previous cases involving the media, gaps of three and 10 months
between publication and trial were held to have lessened any risk; in another case involving ITN and the publication of widely
circulated information that a prisoner who had escaped from jail was a convicted IRA terrorist did not negate that risk.

Publication during a trial is clearly problematic. In June 1999 the Sun published serious allegations about a defendant
in a murder trial just as the jury were retiring; the charge was dropped and the Sun was fined £35,000. The collapse
of an assault trial involving Leeds United footballers in April 2001, following publication of an interview with the victim's
father in the Sunday Mirror (which some jury members had read while deliberating), resulted in its editor, Colin Myler, resigning;
the paper was subsequently found guilty of contempt of court, fined £75,000 and ordered to pay costs of £100,000.

In recent years the UK attorney general's office has taken to issuing what it calls "guidance" in high-profile
criminal cases (as it has done in the Joanna Yeates case) but this does no more than remind newspaper lawyers what they already
know. Whether because successive attorney generals have believed the law is against them or because they think that coverage
had been distastefulbut not overstepped the line, there has been an apparent reluctance to bring contempt proceeding against
the media in recent years over their post-arrest/pre-trial reporting. Judges seem to accept that most pre-trial coverage,
while it may be prejudicial, falls short of creating a "substantial risk of being seriously prejudicial". On a practical
level, one factor that will rein in the media's reporting of a case is the risk of being sued for defamation. Go too far
in reporting speculation and innuendo after an arrest and there is a real risk of that if the accused is not charged.

Although Madeleine McCann's disappearance took place abroad and was not covered by UK contempt rules, it serves as a
salutory reminder of the consequences for the UK media of overreporting criminal cases. Following accusations in the press,
Gerry and Kate McCann and Robert Murat instigated libel actions: the Daily Express and the Daily Star published front-page
apologies and agreed to pay the McCanns £550,000 in damages; and a group of British newspapers settled with Murat for
a £600,000 payout and issued a public apology. The Tapas Seven (friends of the McCanns) were awarded about £375,000
in damages and secured printed apologies from Express Newspapers.

Things have changed greatly since 1981, not least
with the advent of new technology and the web, which have made reporting a truly global affair, reaching into the corners
of every country in the world. Looking forward, the options appear to be: enforce the present regime more rigorously, based
on the belief that jurors are easily influenced and misled and consequently need to be protected; reinstate the practice of
isolating juries by sending them to hotels to deliberate their verdicts – this is unlikely to happen other than in the
most sensitive of cases, as it is too expensive; or operate tighter jury vetting to see if people have been influenced.

Realistically, the UK courts are fighting a losing battle in trying to control publications under the contempt of
court provisions – even if the law in the UK were to be made more restrictive, it would not restrict foreign media outlets
or the blogosphere.

The sensible way forward appears to be to give jurors robust instructions at the outset of
a trial – not to discuss the case with others; to disregard any media reports; not to be tempted to be amateur detectives
and go searching on the internet; to make their decision based only on the evidence they hear in court.

In 1996,
the then lord chief justice, Peter Taylor, refused to accept as a ground of appeal against conviction by Rosemary West (who
had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls) that adverse publicity surrounding her
arrest had affected the jury's ability to reach a fair verdict; he felt juries were capable of concentrating on the evidence
and resisting the media's sensationalist excesses.

Gill Phillips is the Guardian's director of editorial
legal services

Mauritius honeymoon murder: We're
not even safe in paradise, 13 January 2011

Mauritius honeymoon murder: We're not even safe
in paradise The Telegraph

By Judith Woods7:00AM GMT 13 Jan 2011

- Extract -

When I visited Mauritius, in 2006, I was with my elder daughter, then aged three. As she was too tired from the
day's giddy excitements to stay up past supper, I would tuck her into bed before heading off, without a second’s
thought, to dine with friends.

A year later, Madeleine McCann was taken from an Algarve holiday apartment in Praia
da Luz. Her appalling abduction robbed a family of their daughter and every parent of their prelapsarian innocence –
their naivety – that far-flung locations were automatically safer, strangers kinder, risks lower than at home.

I shudder now to think of having left my child – albeit inside a locked hotel room – alone in what is, for all
the fluffy white bath robes, a developing nation, where petty crime has an altogether more desperate, vicious edge. My hotel
was luxurious to a fault, peopled with a vast number of smiling staff and well-heeled guests; does that make it less likely
or more likely to be targeted by criminals?

There, their VW Sharan people carrier was hijacked by two gunmen who robbed and dumped Mr Dewani,
then shot dead his 28-year-old bride [Anni].

However, Anni's family in Sweden are not ­convinced and side
firmly with the South ­African authorities, who wish to try him for plotting her murder.

The extradition application
resumes in the High Court in London on Thursday. In many ways, the case disturbingly echoes that of Madeleine McCann —
which I have studied at length and written about on many occasions. And visiting South Africa this week on the trail of the
honeymoon murderer, the parallels seemed clear.

A mysterious crime is committed overseas, and — eager to
protect its reputation — the host country promptly accuses the apparent victim, a British tourist, of being behind it.

There follows a fiercely patriotic international row which is seized upon by internet conspiracy theorists, whose
lurid speculation further ­muddies the truth.

And, almost inevitably in this spin-obsessed age, a PR battle
begins. The McCanns employed former BBC man Clarence Mitchell to do their bidding; the Dewanis have plumped for the altogether
racier Max Clifford.

15 January 2011"Correio da Manhã"
makes headlines today with the departure of 31 "historical" inspectors from the Judicial Police, which it said are
"disillusioned with the law and upset with the recent budget cuts."

According to "Correio da Manhã",
among the losses are José Braz, director of the Lisbon PJ, Calado Oliveira, PJ coordinator assigned to work exclusively
on the Freeport case and Paulo Rebelo, of the Faro PJ, responsible for the Maddie case after the exit of Gonçalo Amaral.The daily writes that some of the PJ's most skilled staff say working for the police "is almost an
embarrassment that we must hide from the neighbours."

by Martin Shipton, Western MailJan 19 2011A
CONSERVATIVE candidate who made a sick joke about the missing girl Madeleine McCann has stood down "for personal reasons",
it was confirmed last night.

It was reported on Monday that Richard Lowe had been selected to stand in Alyn &
Deeside in May’s Assembly election.

But a Welsh Conservative Party spokesman said last night: "He was
selected as the candidate for the seat, but stood down for personal reasons last week. We shall not be commenting further."

In 2009 Mr Lowe, who is a member of Cheshire West and Chester Council, had the Tory whip withdrawn for four months
after making a sick joke on Facebook about Madeleine.

He was forced to apologise for "inappropriate"
comments he posted in response to boasts by fellow Conservative Matt Lewis about dressing up as Madeleine McCann for a New
Year’s Eve party.

Mr Lowe had written on the social networking site: "Is this a cunning (Baldrick style)
plan to obtain the reward money? Room for one more?"

His group leader, Mike Jones, said after Mr Lowe's
reinstatement: "He's done a lot of growing up in the last three months."

In April last year it was
revealed that Mr Lowe had attended only one council meeting in six months, despite receiving an annual allowance of £11,458.
He told a local paper at the time: "It's purely because it's been one thing after another.

"One
meeting I was involved in a car crash, another there was a meeting in work which I couldn't get out of until late.

"I know as well as anybody else that's not fantastic but I give my apologies as and when I can."

A Welsh Labour spokesman said: "This must go down as a record for shortest stay as an Assembly candidate.

"We have no idea why Councillor Lowe has resigned but voting for this man would have been hard to stomach for
people across Alyn & Deeside. There is no room in politics for the sick kind of behaviour he has been involved in the
past."

Mr Lowe is the second Conservative Assembly candidate to resign in recent months, the other being Anthony
Ridge-Newman in Gower.

The spokesman for the family
of Madeleine McCann has spoken of his fear that he may have been a victim of attempts to hack into his mobile phone.

Clarence Mitchell, who also worked for the Conservative Party during the General Election, said records from Vodafone appeared
to show someone had tried to get information from his phone at the height of the case involving the missing girl.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, Mr Mitchell said he had no idea who might have made the three suspect calls
but said it seemed to be a "cack-handed" attempt to get into his voicemail messages.

He said he was led
to make inquiries after he was approached by the BBC.

"I was always concerned that if some journalists were
up to this sort of thing, then I might be a target but I had no proof," he said.

He told the BBC that Vodafone
looked back at records for calls regarding his number on their customer services number and flagged up three entries.

Mr Mitchell said he believed someone had been "fishing" for information.

He continued: "It is
impossible to state with any accuracy who was behind these calls. I do know they weren't me.

"It would
be naive of me, given the situation I was in at the time and the amount of journalistic inquiry and traffic that I was receiving
on that number, to think that it wasn't journalistic in its nature. There's no other reason for anybody else to try
to get into my number. This was a cack-handed, pretty low-level amateurish attempt."

He said the McCanns would
be "angered and upset" by the alleged attempts to intercept messages during the time of the investigation into their
daughter's disappearance.

The spokesman for the family of Madeleine McCann says he will contact the police
because he believes someone attempted to access information about his mobile phone account and voicemail.

Clarence Mitchell became the family's point of contact for the media after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from
the holiday apartment where her family was staying in Portugal in May 2007.

Journalists from dozens of news organisations
around the world regarded him as a key to potential new angles.

Mr Mitchell asked his mobile phone provider, Vodafone,
to check his account details after years of allegations about how some journalists got their stories.'Blatant attempt'

"I was always concerned that if some journalists were
up to this sort of thing that I might be a target but I had no proof," he said.

Mr Mitchell was told that
records of calls made and received are routinely destroyed after about a year.

However, he was provided with some
information including details of calls made to Vodafone about his account.

Two instances were drawn to his attention,
the first one on 29 February 2008.

Mr Mitchell said: "The operator lists it, saying 'a gentleman called
wishing to check the phone', as he gets calls each night from the number and wanting information and is a 'witness
on the CID trial for McCanns'.

"Well, that doesn't make sense. It certainly wasn't me that made
that call. I would never use that phraseology and there was no such thing as a CID trial for the McCanns. It's ridiculous.

"That appears to me to be a blatant attempt to get information about whose number it was and what was happening.
Thankfully the operator didn't give them anything."'Fishing for
information'

Another call was made to Vodafone customer services in July 2008.

Mr
Mitchell said: "Basically it [the entry] claims the person ringing - not me I stress - had received a text message, claiming
that a third party had been trying to access their voicemail but there was nothing on the account showing that.

"Well,
that's because it isn't true. I never got such a text. Somebody else is again fishing for information here. The Vodafone
operator believed they were talking to me as the account holder, that's why they listed it as customer."

Mr Mitchell says he knows "absolutely" that he did not make either call.

On both occasions, he says,
"thankfully" the phone company's security measures worked and no information was divulged.

To his
frustration, due to the lack of other information now available, he says he cannot trace who might have done this.

"It is impossible to state with any accuracy who was behind these calls. Given the situation that I was in at the time
and the amount of journalistic inquiry and traffic that I was receiving on that number, it would be naive of me to think that
it wasn't journalistic in its nature.

"This was a cack-handed, pretty low level, amateurish attempt. I'm
angry, I'm shocked by it but I'm not surprised."

Mr Mitchell also said that Kate and Gerry McCann,
of Rothley, Leicestershire, had a "very dim view" of some sections of the British press and therefore had a "world
weariness" about the situation.

"They're angered by this and will be upset, but again, like myself,
in some respects not surprised that somebody could be so stupid as to possibly try this," he said.

Ian Burrell: Those who rush to demonise
innocent suspects need to pause, 24 January 2011

Ian Burrell: Those who rush to demonise innocent suspects
need to pause The Independent

Media on MondayMonday, 24 January 2011

If British journalism ever had a collective consciousness, it could pride itself on exposing such travesties as the convictions
of the Birmingham Six, the Bridgewater Four and the Maguire Seven. But, these days the media seems to create more miscarriages
of justice than it solves.

The list is getting longer. Having had dubious roles in the character assassinations
of the London misfits Colin Stagg and Barry George, the press demonised the innocent "school nerd" Tom Stephens
in stories about the Ipswich vice murders. He "always wore tight trousers", a former school-friend told The Daily
Telegraph. Even the award of £600,000 damages paid by 11 titles to Robert Murat – who was compared to the child
killer Ian Huntley after aiding the search for Madeleine McCann – has not discouraged the press from trying to finger
the local weirdo for murder.

Christopher Jefferies, landlord of the Bristol murder victim Joanna Yeates, was variously
described by The Sun as "weird, posh, lewd and creepy", a "blue-rinse, long-haired bachelor", who was
"very unkempt and had dirty fingernails" and was "fascinated by making lewd sexual remarks". The comments
were attributed to unnamed students of the highly-regarded former member of the English department at Clifton College. The
Daily Mirror quoted another "ex-pupil" asserting that Mr Jefferies, 65, was "obsessed" with Oscar Wilde
and his "favourite" work was "The Ballad of Reading Gaol". The paper noted that this poem "tells
the story of a man who was hanged for cutting his wife's throat". The Daily Mail wondered if Mr Jefferies could "hold
the key" to a murder case in which the victim's flat showed no signs of a forced entry.

The Attorney General,
Dominic Grieve, felt obliged to issue the press with a rare warning over potential contempt of court. When the former schoolmaster
was released without charge on 1 January he promptly contacted lawyers. The Stokoe Partnership, a London firm, issued an alert
to all national newspapers in respect of "a number of damaging and highly defamatory media reports". This coverage,
it said, "was based on uninformed speculation, rumour and insinuation. The suggestion that our client was in any way
involved in Ms Yeates' murder is false and seriously defamatory".

Mr Jefferies, who remains on police
bail, is understood to be considering whether to pursue legal action over the press coverage. On Saturday, a 32-year-old man
was charged with murdering Ms Yeates.

Stephen "Stig" Abell, director of the Press Complaints Commission,
says the self-regulatory body is trying to be "more proactive" in approaching people who are named in such stories,
such as Mr Jefferies, and offering "to investigate on their behalf". But media observers say it is harder to clear
your name in the internet era. "If you Google 'Christopher Jefferies' I suspect that for an awful long time to
come his name will be associated with the murder of Jo Yeates," says Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust.
"It appears as though the press feel there are less constraints. They don't seem to be worried about codes of self-regulation
or about libel."

It had been assumed that the extreme treatment of Mr Murat, who compared his treatment to
"a fox being pursued by a pack of hounds", was linked to the case being based in foreign jurisdiction. The case
of Shrien Dewani, who is accused in South Africa of murdering his wife Anni, has also prompted widespread media speculation
regarding his possible motive.

"Sensation sells," says publicist Max Clifford, who has worked for Murat
and Dewani. "It's always been like that but it's getting more vicious and destructive. They'll always be
tarred no matter what happens."

Media silk Desmond Browne QC believes the pack mentality on big stories drives
reporters to outdo each other in sensationalism. "There's a syndrome best described by the cliché of 'feeding
frenzy' – they are encouraged by the excesses of each other and in the general mêlée caution gets thrown
to the wind."

Casual acquaintances and former classmates who offer anonymous quotes on character that are
open to wide interpretation form part of the problem. But responsibility for their use rests with the media.

Kevin
Marsh, former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme and executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism, says trial
by media is especially harmful when the Government is reviewing libel laws said to be "chilling" investigative reporting.
"The one thing the [Daily] Express and [Daily] Star journalists could have done with when committing 106 libels against
the McCanns was a bit of 'chilling'," he says. "Or the journalists who had Colin Stagg banged to rights
in the Rachel Nickell case, Tom Stephens in the Ipswich murders, or Chris Jefferies in the Yeates murder. Couldn't they
have done with a bit more 'chill'?"

Q:Whilst you were a journalist following
the case of Jessica and Holly in Soham. The children were found dead 2 weeks later. Did you predict the same ending to this
case?A:I thought that by this time she would have been found dead or alive, but an ending similar to the case of
Jessica and Holly is possible, I don't want to and can't speak about Robert Murat but some of the journalists that
worked with me in Soham, and that were recently in Portugal, saw similarities between the case and Robert Murat, more than
this I will not say.

Something that that made everyone happy this week was the
news that a young girl has been reunited with her family 23 years after she was kidnapped from a hospital in New York. It
gives us all hope for Madeleine McCann. It's hard to believe that she has been missing for four years but I hope this
new story can give some comfort to her parents who continue to work tirelessly to find her. Kate and Gerry are organising
a charity event later this year in Liverpool its called a 'Bag of Hope' They are asking peole to donate bags of any
kind from designer handbags to sports bag to be auctioned to raise much needed funds. If you would like to support this great
event then contact karen Mccalman the find madeleine campaign co-ordinator her email address is karen@findmadeleine.com

Kate
and Gerry McCann have made an appeal to the Portuguese people for them to support their petition calling for a review of the
case of their missing daughter Madeleine.

Since its launch in November 2010, more than 40,000 people have signed
the petition, which asks for the authorities in Portugal and the UK to conduct an independent and transparent review of all
the information regarding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Gerry McCann said: "We need the authorities
to do more. Our goal is to reach 100,000 signatures that would represent 100,000 people who want a review of the facts
and suspects found at the time of the investigation.

"Reports and information received by the PJ during the
first phase of the investigation may not have been reviewed in the best way, which meant that the data from the investigation
was not reviewed correctly."

Kate McCann added: "We know we can only ask for the case to be reopened
if we have new facts but given that the official investigation has now stopped it will be almost impossible for us to find
these new facts that could lead to the reopening of the case.

"Therefore we appeal to the authorities, both
Portuguese and English, to reassess the entire process so that we can find our daughter."

KATE and Gerry McCann are furious after discovering attempts have been made to find
out about phone calls they made to their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.

Scotland Yard is trying
to establish who tried to get information from Mr Mitchell's mobile phone provider, while the McCanns are checking their
phone records to see if they were also targeted.

The news comes just as the pair have signed a deal for a reputed
£200,000 with The Sun, the sister paper of the News of the World, to serialise a book on the disappearance of their
daughter Madeleine in Portugal in 2007.

There is no suggestion anyone from Rupert Murdoch's News International
has tried to use phone-hacking against Mr Mitchell. He said the first incident was in 2008, when a mystery caller claiming
to be a court witness contacted Vodafone on February 29, seeking details of his phone.

Mr Mitchell said: "The
operator lists it, saying 'a gentleman called wishing to check the phone' as he gets calls each night from the number
wanting information and is a 'witness on the CID trial for McCanns'. It certainly wasn't me that made that call.
There was no such thing as a CID trial for the McCanns.

"That appears to be a blatant attempt to get information
about whose number it was and what was happening. Thankfully, the operator didn't give them anything."

A
further call was made to Vodafone in July. Mr Mitchell said: "Basically, it [the entry] claims the person ringing, not
me, received a text message claiming that a third party had been trying to access their voicemail but there was nothing on
the account showing that. That's because it isn't true, I never got such a text. Somebody else is again fishing for
information."

This week Mr Mitchell will pass his phone records to Scotland Yard. Kate and Gerry, both 42,
have found nothing untoward on their phone statements, but are re-examining all their records.

Mr Mitchell said:
"We have concerns. We would be foolish if we didn't think they were of interest."

Kate's book
about Madeleine's disappearance will be published on May 12, her eighth birthday.

KATE and Gerry McCann have demanded copies of their mobile phone records over fears their voicemail messages might
have been hacked.

Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said the parents of missing Madeleine McCann were concerned
they could be victims of the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

Ian Edmondson, head of news at the paper,
was sacked last week after evidence emerged that he was linked to the hacking of mobile phones belonging to high profile individuals.

Mitchell, who recently revealed that someone attempted to access information about his own mobile phone account and
voicemail, stressed there was no evidence yet to suggest Kate and Gerry had been targetted.

He said: "Gerry
has seen his records and there is nothing untoward on his account. An initial assessment of Kate's account also shows
nothing untoward, but we are re-examining the records to be sure.

"Yes, of course, we have concerns. We would
be foolish if we didn't think that they were of interest.

"But Kate and Gerry have bigger things to worry
about and they consider this to be a bit of a distraction from the search to find their daughter."

Mitchell
became the family's point of contact for the media after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from the holiday apartment
where her family was staying in Portugal in May 2007.

Mitchell said Vodafone had warned him about two attempts
to access his account. He added: "That appears to me to be a blatant attempt to get information.

"I am
going to make a formal complaint to the police.

"I have no idea who made these calls but given it was at the
height of the Madeleine story with some papers running front page news on it every day, I can only assume it was a journalist."

"People speak without speaking. The face screams," says Armindo Freitas-Magalhães,
director of the Laboratory for Facial Expression of Emotions (FEELab) at Fernando Pessoa University. And it always screams
the truth. Even when one tries to hide, simulate or distort.

Because the muscles draw on the face (the stage) the
emotions that are generated in the brain (the dressing rooms) in a spontaneous and involuntary way, the psychologist explains.
And he states: "Facial expressions never lie".

Paul Ekman, a famous North American psychologist who inspired
the television series "Lie to me", has cartographed the expression of emotions on the human face, based on muscle
movements of the face, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the eyelids, the eyebrows, the forehead and the neck. The result is
the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), a scientifically validated instrument – contrary to the polygraph – that
has many uses, including criminal investigation.

The Paul Ekman Group cooperates with the FBI, the CIA, the Scotland
Yard and other investigation agencies, just like in the television show, which is fictional and exaggerated in some aspects,
but with scientific bases, asserts Freitas-Magalhães, who is also a member of the institution.

In Portugal,
the study of facial expressions has never been applied in police investigations and the fact that police interrogation is
not recorded on video renders its application more difficult. The FEELab's director confirms the existence of "non
official approaches", when Madeleine McCann disappeared, and he even came to analyze the parents' expressions during
public statements.

He concluded that when they stated that they had never given their children sedatives, there
was no congruence between the verbal language (words) and the non verbal (facial expressions). Which indicates that they lied.
"The way one says something is more important than what is being said. Even blinking gives indications about what one
is feeling," the psychologist stresses.

Every expression, every movement has a meaning. More than that: they
are universal. A Portuguese person's face reveals emotions such as happiness, despise or surprise in the same way that
a Chinese. In other words, they use the same facial markers. What differs are the rules of social exhibition, Freitas-Magalhães
explains, citing Ekman's studies in New Guinea, which demonstrated the universality of the facial expression of emotions.

Simulations are obviously possible, and some people handle them well, especially in situations where there is an emotional
emptiness, but the produced expressions do not comply with the criteria of truthfulness and someone who has mastered the FACS
is able to detect the lies. Always, the investigator guarantees. One of the ways to find the falsehood of an expression is
to analyze the face's symmetry: in case of a simulation, the left side's movements do not match the right side's
movements.

-----------------

The McCanns interview, 10 August 2007 RTP Channel

Transcript

By Nigel Moore

Sandra Felgueiras: In that evening, did you give to your kids something like Calpol to help them sleep?

Gerry McCann: You know, we're not going to comment on anything but, you know, there is absolutely
no way we used any sedative drugs or anything like that and, you know, we'll... we have cooperated fully with the
police, we'll answer any queries, errm... any tests that they want to do, at any... (video cuts)

-----------------

Gerry McCanns' statement, 07 September 2007

Medication
for the children

When questioned, he states that none of his children takes any kind of medication
regularly in England.

When they travelled on holiday to Portugal they brought several medicines, namely Calpol,
Nurofen, for fevers and pains, both for adults and children, Losec for gastric problems that he occasionally suffers from,
and an anti-histamine called Terfenadine for hay fever. He did not give any of these medicines or any others to the children
while on holiday in Portugal.

THE parents of murdered Jo Yeates last night told how they feel
"lucky" - because at least they can hold a funeral for her.

Heartbroken David and Teresa
Yeates told how the murder of Jo, 25, had left them grief-stricken and changed their lives forever.

But they also
spoke of their sympathy for others - like Madeleine McCann's family - whose loved ones disappear without trace.

The couple gave a moving and dignified interview after a judge yesterday heard that lawyers representing
murder accused Vincent Tabak had released Jo's body following a second post mortem.

IT consultant David, 63,
said: "We appreciate we are not the only people who go through this.

"We keep reminding ourselves that
we are not unique and this helps in some way, but we are very sad for others who have been through it as well.

"We
really feel for those people who have not been able to bury their children. We keep reminding ourselves that in some way we
are, we are loath to use the word, but 'lucky'.

"The McCanns are one set of people like this but there
are others as well. I can't imagine what it must be like not to be able to bury their children, or to have to bury some
bones discovered years later. Whatever we have experienced, they probably had it a lot worse. There is a finality to our situation.
The perpetual not knowing would be worse."

David added: "We do not know if we will ever have closure.
We will always have Jo in our minds as long as we live. What happened has changed our lives forever."

David
said he and supermarket worker Teresa, 58, had sought comfort in Jo's happiness before her death.

He added:
"We try to keep ourselves going with what Jo achieved and the fact that she was very happy. Everything had come together
for her, we feel she was at the happiest time of her life."

Jo, a landscape architect, disappeared on December
17 after drinks with friends. Her snow-covered body was found on Christmas Day beside a country lane three miles from her
flat in Clifton, Bristol.

Her parents, from Ampfield, Hants, are now organising her funeral, although a date has
not yet been set.

David said: "We are planning an ordinary funeral - we are not trying to glamorise what happened.
We cannot celebrate her life - it is difficult to associate celebration with what has happened."

Jo's
family yesterday learned they face an eight-month wait before Tabak, 32, is due to stand trial at Bristol Crown Court.

He appeared before court via video link from the prison where he is being held on remand. A judge said the next hearing
would be on May 4, and set a provisional trial date of October 4.

Sympathy from the parents of murdered Jo Yeates for Kate and Gerry McCann.

David and Teresa
Yeates said they felt "lucky" that at least they were able to give their daughter a funeral.

Mr. Yeates
said: "We really feel for those people who have not been able to bury their children.

"We keep reminding
ourselves that in some way we are, we are loath to use the word, but 'lucky'." The McCanns are one set of people
like this, but there are others as well.

"I can't imagine what it must be like not to be able to bury
their children, or to have to bury some bones discovered years later."

The McCanns responded in a statement:
"We are very grateful to David and Teresa Yeates for keeping us in their thoughts at such a painful time for their own
family. While the anguish of not knowing what has happened to Madeleine is truly awful, we, of course, still have hope that
our ongoing search for our daughter will lead to her being found alive.

"Recent cases such as that of Carlina
White in the USA, reunited with her family after being abducted as a baby some 23 years ago, only serve to renew our resolve
to never give up. It again proves that hope is not unfounded.

"We would ask anyone who has any information
about Madeleine to get in touch with their local police immediately or contact our private investigators via www.findmadeleine.com"

Fundraisers can learn from our human response to disasters, 04 February 2011

What if I gave you $100 to donate to either (a) Sandra, a young, homeless girl whose parents abandoned
her, or (b) the overall homelessness plight? Who would you give the money to? Most of you will pick Sandra even though donating
to "homelessness" would go to people in a similar situation to Sandra. Why? Because we're hard-wired to care
more about a victim we can identify with than a large number of people or faceless statistics, no matter how grim. That's
why, according to academics, people stand by and do nothing or do not intervene early enough in the face of great tragedies,
like the genocide in Rwanda. It's impossible to comprehend 800,000 individuals. They're just "lots and lots of
dots."

We don't lose sleep over genocide, but we're deeply affected by one person's story, like
the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. This isn't right or wrong, it's simply a fact about how people comprehend individual
lives. To reluctantly quote Josef Stalin: "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." Our brains are
programmed to tune out large numbers of people and instead focus on single individuals. This tells us a lot about why we support
certain causes and why, for example, 33 Chilean miners received more press coverage than 20 million flood-affected Pakistanis.
The fewer the number of people the more "real" a story becomes.

To prove this theory, researchers conducted
an experiment in which they gave people the opportunity to donate up to $5 to Save the Children. They could chose which area
of the charity's work the money would go toward: (a) an identifiable victim (African girl Rokia); (b) statistical victims
(starvation in Africa); or (c) identifiable victim with statistics (Rokia + starvation stats). Donations to an identifiable
victim, Rokia, generated more than twice as much money as donations to a statistical portrayal of starvation in African. Even
adding statistics to Rokia's story reduced the donation amount. Other research found that adding just one extra person
to the appeal reduced the amount of the donation. The more people involved the less we are affected. People don't like
numbers when it comes to compassion.

This awareness of human psychology has practical implications for charities
and fundraisers. Fundraising is all about understanding people's motivations for supporting a cause -- is Anna donating
to our charity because she just wants to run 10k, or does she genuinely care about the cause (or both)? Either way, her decision
is rational and thought out. The decision to support one person instead of many, however, is unconscious. It has to do with
the way we feel about an issue in an instant rather than stepping back and taking a rational look at it. There is something
about the face and story of one individual that grabs us and makes us want to take action.

So, to maximize donations,
fundraisers should focus their public appeals on one person's story, accompanied by a powerful image.

In the
words of Mother Teresa, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

Jeremy
Douglas is a professional fundraising consultant. jerdouglas@gmail.com

It is Gerry who is behind what he tells me is "the marketing … a high public awareness" of Madeleine. At
his side while we talk is Clarence Mitchell, a voluble former government media analyst and BBC reporter, handpicked by Gerry
to be the latest in a line of spokesmen. On October 17, Mitchell spoke at Coventry University. His topic: "Missing Madeleine
McCann: The Perfect PR Campaign." Except that it has been anything but perfect.

It has in fact been so counterproductive
that, as winter approached, Portuguese attorney general Fernando Pinto Monteiro suggested that one way or another the McCanns
were responsible for their child's death. Specifically he said that if indeed Madeleine had been kidnapped, it was the
carefully contrived publicity engineered by her parents that likely sealed her fate. "With the whole world having Madeleine's
photo," he observed, any abductor would have been pushed to such a degree that "there's a greater probability
of the little girl being dead than alive."

(...)

And his judgment [Gerry McCann] is certainly questionable.
In the fall, for instance, it emerged that the McCanns had made two mortgage payments from the $2.4 million fund set up to
find Madeleine.

(...)

Gerry understood that [informing the media of Madeleine's unique right eye -
a risky revelation]. But, he says, the iris "is Madeleine's only true distinctive feature. Certainly we thought it
was possible that this could potentially hurt her or" - he grimaces - "her abductor might do something to her eye.…
But in terms of marketing, it was a good ploy."

A couple of special items this week to note. The Archbishop will be with us on Tuesday to
celebrate the 5.15pm Sung Mass for the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Archbishop Worlock - can it really be fifteen
years ago ? On Saturday evening at 7.30pm the University of Liverpool Chamber Choir are holding a concert in the Cathedral
which I encourage you to come along to. Curtis Perriman, one of the Gentlemen of the Choir is the Director and it promises
to be an interesting programme of works. Whilst this is going on in the Cathedral, there is a Fund Raising Dinner for Madeleine
McCann being held in the Crypt. It is almost four years since the little girl went missing from the family's apartment
in the Algarve region of Portugal and we continue to remember the family in our prayers at the Cathedral.

Madeleine McCann is in America –
and I know who took her, 18 February 2011

From EMILY NASH and JON CLARKE in Huelva, SpainPublished: Today
(18 February 2011)

AN INVESTIGATOR has told cops Madeleine McCann was taken to the US - and he has
named two key suspects.

Marcelino Italiano, 36, said she had been snatched by an Algarve-based
paedophile ring. The amateur sleuth added: "They can get away with anything."

Maddie vanished in Portugal
in May 2007.

Angolan-born Italiano said the gang of influential and dangerous perverts had hunted children in the
Algarve before smuggling them out of Portugal.

And he told how he had to flee for his life when his investigations
threatened to unmask them.

The 6ft 4in nightclub bouncer said: "I know these people were involved and I have
been told that Madeleine may now be in America.

"I can't say how, but I have known these people and believe
they can get away with anything.

"I think there have been over a dozen children kidnapped. They prey on the
weak and vulnerable."

Italiano, 36, said the ring was based in Faro and Albufeira, but had high-level contacts
in Portugal's judiciary and links to a legal practice in London.

He added: "They are ruthless. I have
been attacked twice for trying to investigate it and even lost my front tooth in one attack.

"I am prepared
to go to any length to reveal the truth about these sick people - they need to be exposed."

Italiano has handed
a dossier of information he uncovered to police in Huelva, south west Spain.

He says it includes the names of two
prominent Portuguese businessmen and provided photographs of them at a birthday party in the Algarve.

Officers
have passed the information to Portuguese cops while private investigators hired by the Find Madeleine Fund - set up by her
parents Kate and Gerry - are also looking into the dramatic claims.

They chillingly echo the case of the Casa Pia
paedophile ring, which involved the abduction of youngsters from state-run orphanages.

In September six men including
a solicitor, a former ambassador and a TV presenter were jailed for sexually abusing 32 children living at Casa Pia homes
across Portugal.

One of the chief witnesses, former resident Paulo Namora, told the trial that many of the group's
wealthy members were based in the Algarve.

Last night a lawyer acting on behalf of Italiano told The Sun her client
had a "credible and believable story".

She added: "He told the police he believed Maddie was taken
by the gang and he believes she may now be in the US."

A spokesman for Kate and Gerry, of Rothley, Leics,
said: "We are grateful for the information.

"As with any information of this nature the man concerned
has done the right thing by informing the Spanish authorities.

"Clearly it will be a matter for them and the
private investigators currently searching for Madeleine to investigate further."

Maddie was about to turn
four when she disappeared from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007.

Bungling Portuguese
police named her parents as suspects before clearing them.

In 2008 detectives looked into suggestions that Maddie
may have been taken "to order" by a child smuggling ring based in Belgium.

Scotland Yard intelligence
officer John Shord sent Leicestershire police an email reporting: "Somebody connected to this group saw Maddie, took
a photograph of her and sent it to Belgium.

"The purchaser agreed that the girl was suitable and Maddie was
taken."

Some of the information, which came from an anonymous source, was dismissed as not credible.

And both Portuguese police and Interpol were unable to unearth further details. Meanwhile the McCanns' team of investigators
have interviewed hundreds of witnesses, received more than 1,000 phone calls and dealt with more than 15,000 emails from people
from across the globe.

Sightings have been reported across Europe and North Africa and as far away as Canada, Tasmania
and Dubai.

The Sun: 'They chillingly echo the case of the Casa Pia paedophile
ring, which involved the abduction of youngsters from state-run orphanages.'

By
Astro18 February 2011

Anyone who knows the most basic facts about the Casa Pia case is able to see
through the manoeuvre that is being attempted here.

As usual, this is exclusively for British comsumption. The
British public has no knowledge about the Casa Pia case, and is therefore largely unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
This is not the first time that someone tries to link Madeleine's disappearance with the Casa Pia scandal. I think it
is important to stress that within the Casa Pia case, several prominent personalities have been accused and found guilty of
abusing young boys from a social institution (the "Casa Pia") - appeals have been filed, therefore the sentences
are, in fact, suspended until further ruling from higher courts.

There has never been a case of abduction
within the Casa Pia investigation.

Maddie is in US .. I know who took her
(paper edition), 18 February 2011

Peter Hill
today edits his last edition of the Daily Express ending an amazing 50-year career in newspapers.

After starting
on the Colne Valley Guardian in West Yorkshire straight out of school he worked his way up through the regional and national
press to edit the Daily Star for five years between 1998 and 2003 (rapidly growing its circulation at a time when other redtops
were flagging).

He has edited the Daily Express for the last seven years.

In an interview with Press
Gazette this week he spoke about his pride at his achievements at the Star and Daily Express, but also voiced his regret over
coverage of the Madeleine McCann disappearance which resulted in a record libel payout.

In March 2008 all four
Express Newspapers national titles printed front-page apologies after a £550,000 out of court settlement following many
articles which implied that Gerry and Kate McCann were to blame for the disappearance of their three-year-old daughter from
Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

Asked whether he had any regrets about the coverage, Hill said: "The fact
of the matter is that the McCanns could have sued any of the British media. All the British media went crazy about the story
because it was such an amazing story.

"You could say that all the media had to some extent fallen for the
leaks that were put out by the Portuguese police and the Portuguese authorities.

"While I regret that we printed
those hurtful things about the McCanns – it was not done with any malice at all.

"As you see from the
recent Beckham case, in the United States there would have been no case for libel because there was no question of malice."

(article continues...)

---------------------

Peter Hill: 'I did too much on the Madeleine McCann
story' The Guardian

The retiring editor of the Daily Express on the costly libel and his relationship with Richard
Desmond

Roy GreensladeMonday 21 February 2011

Peter Hill has pulled
off that most difficult of tricks in the media world. He has managed to maintain a low profile despite being at the centre
of several controversies and attracting considerable criticism during his seven years as editor of the Daily Express. He has
also achieved the rare distinction in national newspapers of choosing to retire rather than being axed. Friday evening was
his last in the Express chair, and marked the end of a journalistic career stretching back 50 years.

He waited
until his final week to give a rare formal interview, at the Northern & Shell building beside the Thames, to look back
over his years in newspapers and to answer his critics. Hill is certainly not reticent. He does not apologise for his lengthy
campaign against immigration, which earned him odium, nor for his paper's derided obsession with the death of Princess
Diana.

But he is contrite about the sad episode that ended with Express Newspapers being landed with one of the
most expensive legal bills in newspaper history – the coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Hill's
paper and its three other titles, the Daily Star, Sunday Express and Daily Star Sunday. He says: "I did too much on the
story. I accept that."

Too much wasn't the only problem though. There were also the stories that suggested
Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, might have been complicit in her disappearance, which in its apology Express
Newspapers admitted were "seriously defamatory".

Asked whether he regretted libelling the McCanns, he
replies: "Of course I do. And I insisted on apologising on the front of the newspaper when it became clear that it was
a complete fabrication. We gave them £500,000. It doesn't redound to my credit but it did help them to continue
the search."Leaking stories

So why did it happen? "It was a huge story,
and every adult in the country had an opinion on it. I admit it helped to sell the paper. There were many factors involved,
such as the way Maddy's parents sought publicity in an unprecedented way.

"All the way through, our principal
focus was on 'what's happened to Maddy?' The Portuguese police and British legal sources were leaking stories
that implied the McCanns were guilty in some way. We were not to know that the Portuguese police were ineffectual and, in
some cases, corrupt."

The furore following the legal settlement led to questions about press behaviour in
parliament and to attacks on the Press Complaints Commission for what was perceived as a failure of the self-regulatory body
to act decisively. Hill was a member of the PCC and remained in place for several months after the court case until suddenly
departing. "I was not ousted," he stresses. "We all agreed it would be better for the PCC if I went."

I suggested to him that the PCC's then chairman, Sir Christopher Meyer, was disappointed that he had not walked
earlier. Hill flushes and says scornfully: "I have no time whatsoever for Christopher Meyer. He is a complete hypocrite.
I was disgusted with him.

"Throughout the time that the McCann stories were running he was friendly towards
me. He never said a word about it, and nothing was said about it at the PCC. There was no criticism, no suggestion that papers
should rein back on the coverage.

"Then, quite suddenly, Meyer went on television to denounce me. I was absolutely
astonished, because, until that time, he'd said nothing about it. I was very angry about it. I shall never forgive him.
He didn't disclose that his wife was intimately connected to the McCanns through her charity. But what can you expect
from a man who ratted on all his previous colleagues and intimates in the Foreign Office?"

Meyer disputes
Hill's account, but does say that his PCC membership was not tenable after the McCanns' settlement. He strenuously
denies that his wife, Catherine, was close to the McCanns. He says she made a single trip with them to Brussels to lobby the
EU over the need for resources to fight child abduction.

But was Hill's PCC departure linked to the recent
decision by the owner of Express Newspapers, Richard Desmond, to withhold the fees to fund the commission? Hill says: "Richard
was disgusted with the way Christopher Meyer behaved."

Clearly irked by the mention of the McCanns episode,
Hill says: "I will not allow that to be the only thing that people talk about in relation to me, though the Guardian
likes to mention it. It was not the defining moment of my career."

Ex-fairground worker Hewlett bore a striking resemblence to the straggly-haired man
seen lurking near the McCanns' holiday apartment.

His previous conviction included the rape of a 12-year-old
girl he lured into his car then drugged with paint stripper. And he was bragged how gipsies had offered him "good money"
for his own blonde-haired daughter aged two.

But Mariana, who suddenly shipped off to Morocco with Hewlett just
three weeks after Maddie's disappearance, has stayed tight- lipped – even about her partner's flawed alibi.

Hewlett claimed that on the Thursday Madeleine (right) was abducted he was with his family at a market up the coast
in Fuzets. But that market is only held on Saturdays. A source close to the McCanns told us: "Through detectives Kate
has begged Mariana to speak out and hopes she will do the right thing. As a mother herself you'd think she'd want
to help."

Mariana lives with her kids in the German city of Aachen, in the same flat she shared with Hewlett
before he died two years ago of throat cancer at 64.

A source close to the investigation said: "Our detectives
are pretty certain Mariana knows a lot about Hewlett's background and activities. That would open up doors to paedophile
networks in the Algarve.

"We were never able to rule Hewlett out as a suspect. He'd have had useful information
and we're convinced Mariana is more than able to fill in the gaps. But she just tells us to go away or puts the phone
down."

"We want to know WHO she knows, and WHAT she's heard about possible routes to spirit a child
out of the country."

"She and Hewlett left Portugal at a rate of knots because he feared being associated
with Madeleine's disappearance."

"We wanted to know about the six children Mariana and Hewlett had
because none of them had any official birth documents. And there was a seventh child who died in mysterious circumstances."

"They never explained how they could move from country to country with the children despite having no passports."